


Blackbird

by fadagaski



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pets, The vault, Wife Furiosa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:05:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/pseuds/fadagaski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Vault, Furiosa takes care of a blackbird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt (of course): pov meme #11- first tell me what sort of pet furiosa has but then have it describe her pls (by nonny).

The Vault is a glass cage and Furiosa rages at the rails. She is sharp words and sharp elbows and sharp nails and she shrieks til her voice breaks the first time he touches her.

After, she curls up by the windows, small and hurt and trembling with impotent violence. The sun warms her skin but inside she feels cold. The glass blocks the breeze, distorts the view into a hazy mirage of orange sand and teal sky. She begins to question what is real, what was ever real. 

A shadow flitters at the base of the glass dome. Aching, lethargic with hopelessness, Furiosa only blinks at it for a long time. 

Maybe she will die here. She will only know the touch of the wind again when her body is stone cold, when they toss her over the ledge. 

The shadow ... chirps.

Despite herself, she moves, crawls to the glass. It is hot and smooth under her fingers. 

Black feathers flutter against the barrier. 

Stupid bird. Free to leave. Free to feel the wind over its wings, soaring over endless dunes in an endless sky. Wrath bubbles up inside Furiosa, eats at her heart like battery acid. She slaps her hand against the glass with teeth bared. The bird cheeps and flutters. 

Tears sting at Furiosa's eyes. She slumps against the window, legs tucked into her chest, eyes on the little bird. She'll wait until it's gone. She'll wait until it's left her alone - alone alone always alone where is her clan where are they? - and then she'll -

She'll - 

Flames lick the sky as the sun dies. Furiosa is cold without its heat, for all that parts of her body sting with pain. The bird is still there.

She licks her lips. Maybe - maybe -

It's stupid to think. It's probably just comfortable, and will fly away to its nest when it gets colder. But, maybe -

Furiosa takes a potted plant off the shelf by the blackboard, discards the greenery with only a small wince. Then, kneeling by the window just a little down from the bird, she raises the pot and smashes it against the glass. Then again, and again. There are voices coming from the bedrooms, the women drawn by the noise. Heart hammering, Furiosa slams the pot into the window again. 

It shatters, shards scattering over her knees. When she looks, the bird is still there.

"Furiosa?" Miss Giddy calls, emerging from her room. 

The hole is just barely big enough for Furiosa to slip her arm through. Glass scratches at her skin, draws lines of thin red blood to the surface. She scowls hard and reaches down, squinting through the warped panes. The bird warbles in warning but her fingers brush soft feathers and she has it! Clasped in her hand.

Miss Giddy eases her back away from the broken window and glass shards gleaming with the last of the sun's glow. The bird is warm in her palm, trembling and so very fragile. When she opens the cage of her fingers, it flutters a wing but doesn't take flight. Broken, maybe. In pain. It has a little beady eye that gleams with life.

"Please," Furiosa whispers, the first kind word she has said to Miss Giddy. "Help him."

Her co-Wives creep out of the dark, fetch books and bandages and crumbs of food, thimbles of water. Seven women crowding around this tiny ball of feathers. Furiosa can feel his heart humming against his ribs, hears the panic in his desperate little tweets. He could die. He could die and he's just a bird, he's just a stupid bird but - Furiosa doesn't know what she'll do if he dies.

"Should we ask for a cage?" says the pregnant Wife - Furiosa never bothered to learn her name, any of their names, she feels shame scorch her cheeks even as she shakes her head.

"No cage," she says. 

"Plenty of water. Plenty of food. Keep him by the window and, when he's ready, he'll fly right out."

For the first time since she was dragged screaming through the Vault door with fresh blood and flesh wedged under her nails where she scratched and fought, Furiosa does as she's told. She brings out her bedding, sets up a little camp by the windows, lays out food and water for the bird. It hops around on its merry little legs, warbles with the sun rise and the sun set, sleeps with delicate eyelids folded closed. Furiosa can't stop watching it. She eats mechanically, doesn't notice as her body heals from the abuse of his touch, barely looks at the other Vault occupants except when they come to sit by her and the bird. 

"Will you name him?" asks the pregant Wife. Furiosa thinks Joe calls this one 'the Golden'. 

"No," she says. "I don't own him." 

One morning the bird is trilling its little song and hops to the broken window, the one they've hidden every time someone from outside comes to visit. Furiosa cracks open her eyes, squints - her heart lurches when she sees the bird spread both his wings, seeming to take a deep breath of the cool morning air. 

He chirps, hops, chirps - and then he's gone.

She can't get there quick enough, scrambles in a tangle of blankets to the hole, lays flat on the floor to look out as his little black body swoops over the Wretched and the Warboys and vanishes out of view.

The wind dries the wet on her cheeks til her face feels flayed open.

(A blackbird concerns itself with maggots and chicks and little else, but there was one at Citadel who - in the depths of his little bird memory - remembered a gentle hand)


End file.
